The Days That Come Often Enough
by Katie Coleman
Summary: My own personal contribution to the SixFics challenge-- short, sweet, and sentimental Dean, Sam and various other character moments. Including the lead up to the ultimate ending of Supernatural in my own eyes.
1. Again

-1Authors note: There was a short challenge on LJ for writers to set their iPods on shuffle and write one fan fiction for each of the six songs which played on their list first.

Here are mine, and I hope you enjoy them :)

**Again.**

She's had the same track playing for hours.

It's corny, and completely over-used, but it depicts exactly how she's feeling right now. Exactly how he left her.

And it sucks out loud.

There's an almost-empty box of (aptly) pink tissues beside the bed she's lying in (the bed he lay in only days before), an overflowing bag filled with mascara-blackened ones next to that, which only reinforces the suckiness every time she looks at it.

She'd had mascara on that morning, which has now run from her eyes to stain black pools down her cheeks, smudging a little every time a tear rolls down her face. She hasn't bothered to wash it off, because there's no one here to see her (which is why it sucks in the first place).

He's not here to see her.

He's not here to see her because he was the one who left her here in the first place.

She promises herself, in this moment, that she's never going to do this again, trust someone to watch them let her down again. It's not worth it, and that sucks even more.

It always ends the same, and that's not going to change, because the lights at the end of the tunnel are almost always the headlights of an oncoming train, and falling in love is just unlocking the door, and leaving it wide open for someone to come in and hurt her.

Again.

And she feels this way for an entire seven hundred and thirty days, before she sees him. And then it all changes.

Again.

(_Kelly Clarkson's "The Trouble With Love Is"_)


	2. The Trouble With Sam Winchester

-1**The Trouble with Sam Winchester**

Three days have passed him a whirr. Another four have passed until he realises what's happened, what's happening.

To him.

He's always thought that this would never be a possibility--thought there was too much wrong with him, with _this_, and it would just pass him on by, and he would have been happy with that, honestly.

Has resigned to this whole hunting thing now, has figured that he's never going to find anything better, and hey, at least he's helping people, even if it does remind him of Hell while he's doing it. It's like he's been here before, got out, only to be enticed by the lure of revenge to be sucked right back in again.

It didn't matter. Not to him. Not anymore.

But now it does.

Because he hadn't expected that he was capable of feeling this--thought he was too hardened by it all to really care about anyone else outside his little family circle, let alone want to _add_ them to his little family circle.

But he can't, so he might as well forget about it as Dean would say. Because this life is screwed, he's screwed, and he can't let her end up like this, too. Has to save her, move on, and only look back on the days that he can't remember what normality feels like anymore.

Those days come often.

_(Robbie Williams- The Trouble With Me)_


	3. When Sam Meets Girl

-1**When Sam Meets Girl**

She often thinks that he must have mistaken her for someone else the night he met her, and she's been living someone else's life now for three months, because this kind of thing happens in movies, and not in real life. They happen in books and fairytales, and that's about it.

Apparently not, because he's taking her out for dinner tonight at the most expensive restaurant in town, and he knows who she is. He's probably the only one who does.

She's fixing her hair in the mirror, though he's told her a thousand times just how perfect he thinks it is, just like it is, but she's got to get it just _right_. She's a perfectionist, like that, and it's only one of the things he loves about her (isn't it a little early to bring out that word, she asks. No, he says, and plants a kiss on her forehead).

She clips the last straying strand of hair into place, and smiles, because his words in her mind remind her that she _doesn__'__t_ have to be perfect; that she already is in his eyes. That's she's _beautiful _and _perfect_ and _wonderful_ in his eyes.

He wraps his hand around her waist.

And _that__'__s_ beautiful, perfect, wonderful. A thousand words she can't think of at the moment, because he's taken her by the hand, and she can think of nothing else but _him_.

He can't think of another thing but _her_, (and how late they are for their dinner reservations, because she doesn't think she's _perfect_ enough, when he knows the exact opposite is true).


	4. How to Disappear

-1**How To Disappear**

The bar stool's comfortable and inviting, and he's drunk and hurting.

The whiskey's warm and burns his throat, which is the most comforting thing he's known all week. The bar mat beneath his glass slides a little as he slams it down, and the barkeep smiles and pours him another. They've got hardly any standards in this place (which he can tell by it's patrons; you wouldn't want to know), and that's just fine by him (in fact, it's probably in his favour tonight).

Sam's words still echo in his head. They're also slurred and a little foggy, but still there. Still haunting him like a poltergeist you can't kill with rock salt. Like a body you can't burn, and a demon you can't exorcise.

They carry too much weight; too much meaning, too much understanding. And each time they find him through this thick haze of cheap alcohol, they swing him an unforgettable blow right to the heart.

"Another," He needs this to disappear for a while. Hide from whatever it is that's eating his brother, and the damned words that are echoing in and out of his mind, leaving behind them a string of depression and desperations.

Because this, the bar, the drink, the company, is how he disappears.

_(My Chemical Romance-- This is How I Disappear)_


	5. All in a Hard Day's Work

-1

**All in a (Hard) Day's Work**

This hospital room is more confining and daunting than he's ever remembered one to be; more intimidating than any hospital room should be. There's about two-pace room from one side of it to the other, mustard-yellow curtains pulled tightly across the window by the bed so that no sunlight can enter and enlighten you with even the slightest hint of cheerfulness.

And it's down right depressing him.

Sam hasn't shown his face in three days, but Hell, it's only a minor injury and Dean doesn't need anyone to hold his hand. Well, that's what you get for letting a ghost run you over in your own car, isn't it?

Figures Sam's probably gone to finish it off. Good riddance to the bitch, he thinks.

The poltergeist, that is. Not Sam.

Still, would be nice if Sammy was the one to take the cake for once, because Dean's sure as Hell sick of getting beaten every fight. Damned broken rib he's been harbouring since Missouri.

Well, now it is a broken rib, ankle, collar bone, minor lung puncture and major concussion. Being hit by cars just wasn't his thing, but y'know.

It's all in a day's work.

Except it's been more than a day, and the painkillers that Legs (the name he's officially come to know the nurse who had signed them in the night Sammy had brought him in by) has given him haven't even begun to work yet.

He doubts they will. He's probably immune to them, they've been self-medicating for years now. Since Sammy was little, and their hospital insurance refused to cover them anymore (said eight broken collarbones, nineteen hospital stays, and at least two hundred prescriptions since the summer John started hunting was probably enough).

And there's nothing else to stare at in here except the stains on the walls, and he seriously doesn't want to know where they came from.

Seriously.

Damn Sam and his neglecting to keep Dean from harm's way. Damn him.


	6. Raining, Pouring

-1**Raining, Pouring**

"Dean, that doesn't mean that's what I am!"

"Sammy, you gotta understand--"

"No! I don't!"

Dean can sense he's fighting the losing battle here, and begins to regret opening his mouth. Hell, he began to regret than even before he'd said anything. He thinks he'll let this one slide.

"Dean, just because some damned demon told you I was the, what did they call me? 'Boy King', doesn't mean that I am! You know that, demons lie, all that shit you and Dad have always told me."

"Yeah, well, that shit… ain't shit, is it?" Dean's defenceless against Sam's rage, and God, if you're up there, just shut him up next time he wants to say anything about this. "You know demons only lie sometimes Sam, only when it's to their advantage. And that demon knew he wasn't going anywhere, Sam…"

"You're kidding me? You've… you've resigned me to my fate? Just like this? You've given up?" Sam turns away because he can't stand to look at his brother anymore.

"I haven't given up. Not on you, Sammy--"

"Don't call me that. Just don't." He intersperses coldly.

Dean bites his tongue, and clenches his jaw because he doesn't know if there's anything left to say.

He wants to take it back, tell Sammy that, 'yeah, so what, a demon we've been hunting for our entire lives, whose blood you just might happen to have in you, told me that when I brought you back from the dead and bargained my miserable life for yours that you were in fact more like Hannibal Lector these days, and not Sam Winchester. But, you know, whatever'.

But he doesn't think that would go down well. Hell, he hardly ever thinks at all.

"Look, we can fight this." He's said it before, and he'll say it one hundred times again if he has to.

Sam spins and looks at him incredulously, "Dean, you have three weeks to live! There is no 'we', because soon, there's only gonna be a 'me'. And that 'me' is a killer, because I should have stayed dead. Hell, isn't that what you always told me; what's dead should damn well stay dead?"

Dean heaves a sigh of defeat, because he's seen it coming all along. But Sammy had needed to know, because he needed to be careful, aware. It didn't have to happen this way. "I'm sorry, Sam."

"For saving me? Gee, thanks, Dean."

"No," Dean shakes his head. "For leaving you in this mess. For bringing you back as something you are not, if what the Yellow Eyes said is true. I know it isn't but, Sammy, you gotta be careful, gotta be aware of it." _Gotta not hate me_, he adds silently. "Gotta fix this. Without me."

And that's it. It's the first time he's seen Sammy cry about this, but it breaks him. Shatters what's left of his soul into a million pieces for causing this, for bringing it down upon them. For causing Sammy's tears.

And when it rains, it pours.


End file.
